The UN World Heritage Committee has rejected the Abbott Government’s application to cut back Tasmania’s protected forests.

Australia applied to remove 74,000 hectares of forest from the World Heritage list, but the committee yesterday dismissed the attempt unanimously.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt applied for the concession in February in order to open up more of the forests to logging.

Mr Hunt said in a statement this morning that he accepted the UN’s decision.

9am

May was the hottest month on record globally.Source:Supplied

May was so hot that it set a new world record, according to US authorities.

AFP reports that last month had the warmest temperatures on both land and water since record-keeping began in 1880.

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces was 0.74C above the 20th century average of 14.8C, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday, eclipsing the previous best in May 2010.

“The majority of the world experienced warmer-than-average monthly temperatures, with record warmth across eastern Kazakhstan, parts of Indonesia, and central and north-western Australia,” NOAA said.

8.30am

Mel Greig on
Today Tonight after the royal prank call. Picture: Channel 7Source:Supplied

Disgraced DJ Mel Greig could return to the airwaves a year and a half after the royal hoax call that went terribly wrong.

Radio insiders told The Daily Telegraph that the radio personality flew from her Adelaide home to Sydney yesterday to meet with Dormer and executives from the station.

Greig received international notoriety in December 2012 when she and her on-air co-host Michael Christian prank called the hospital that the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge was staying at impersonating the Queen.

The British nurse who took the call, Jacintha Saldanha, took her own life after the hoax.

8.15am

A road rage incident in Sydney’s inner west has left an elderly man fighting for his life.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced as the Sunni insurgents continue their campaign.

Most recently, ISIS seized a strategic town in northern Iraq, while security forces reclaimed a border crossing with Syria.

Washington’s “support will be intense, sustained, and if Iraq’s leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective,” Kerry said from the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.

7.40am

Johnny Depp in
Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End.Source:News Limited

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is the most expensive film ever, according to Business Insider.

The 2007 movie, which saw Johnny Depp reprise his iconic role as Captain Jack Sparrow, cost $US341.8 million ($A369.81 million) to produce.

Allowing for inflation, the next most expensive films were the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor epic Cleopatra ($US339.5 million) and James Cameron’s Titanic ($US294.3 million) from 1997.